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When Turkish citizens in Istanbul occupied Gezi Park and nearby Taksim Square in late May to oppose a planned government development, they set off a nation in protest and faced a fierce government response.

With Reuters reporting on Wednesday that a Turkish court actually ruled in early June against the developments during the height of the public response, it now appears that the protesters achieved their symbolic goal. But with protests continuing in Bosnia, Brazil and with wild scenes in Egypt as a nation faces another coup, democratic movements across the globe can learn from the how the Turkish protesters used a range of technologies to better organize and spread their message.

Tweeting like never before

The failure of major Turkish media outlets to cover the protests is now well-documented, but their response may have “become the straw that broke the camel’s back” in pushing Turks to look primarily to social media that was already popular in the country, says Yaman Akdeniz, a law professor at Istanbul Bilgi University.

That led to a Twitter explosion at an unprecedented level. The most popular hashtag on Twitter, “direngezipark,” was tweeted 1.8 million times in three days, more than the most popular hashtag of the entire Egyptian revolution movement in 2011, according to a report by Megan MacDuffee Metzger and Pablo Barberá, who studied Twitter use in the Turkish protests for the Social Media and Political Participation work group at New York University.

Turkish users also dominated their own conversation, with most tweets occurring within Turkey’s borders and in the Turkish language. That’s in contrast to Egypt’s Arab Spring activity, when a majority of tweets tracked by researchers came from outside Egypt and an even greater number used English in part to try to get outside media attention.

Twitter also helped connect like-minded protesters across borders in solidarity, Metzger says. A large volume of protesters in Turkey, Bosnia, Bulgaria and Brazil have cross-referenced each other through shared protest hashtags in recent days.

Apps enter the protesters’ playbook

Native phone applications also played a popular role in the Turkish protests, from a more whimsical viral creation to a major messaging app. A group of Turkish friends in the United States built out one app, “Capulcu Tencere,” that simulates the noise of protesters who have banged pots and pans at 9pm each night out of solidarity with the movement. “We wanted to do something in a rush but with some taste and humor in it,” says Cem Kozinoglu, a co-creator of the app and the cofounder and CEO of a New York City startup, Boomset.

The group targeted users on social media using keywords including “tencere [pot],” “tava [pan]” and “capulcu [looter],” a word the government has used to describe protesters and now an ironic rallying cry for many, says co-creator Naz Colakoglu.

The free app was downloaded over 100,000 times in its first week, mostly over AppleApple’s App Store. The team even created a Portuguese version for solidarity with Brazilian protesters that went live on Apple’s App Store on Tuesday, according to Kerem Baran, Boomset’s cofounder and CTO and another co-creator of the Capulcu Tencere app.

The Capulcu Tencere app is one of several pop culture type apps that have proven popular since the protests began, says Asli Tunc, a media professor at Istanbul Bilgi University. Several games have continued the theme in the Android GoogleGoogle Play store like a Monopoly-type board game and “Angara Birds” riffing off the popular Rovio game.

Another popular app for protesters was “WhatsApp,” the group messaging tool, which allowed closed groups of friends to communicate and find each other. That especially helped when users could share their locations and reconvene after being dispersed by police, says Capulcu Tencere co-creator and Boomset engineer Muhtarcan Goktas. The app’s closed nature also made it difficult for the government to monitor, Akdeniz says.

And to record what’s happening without the media there, protesters took in large numbers to live-streaming video while major broadcasters came under fire for airing footage of penguins. The most popular tools have been Ustream, Vine and Capul.tv, an individual broadcast station created out of Gezi Park.

Web forums

An open forum website, Acik Demokrasi [Open Democracy], became a leading site for concerned people to discuss and vote on ideas related to the Turkish government and the protests. One message board, for example, discussed what another group of Turkish techies should do with the money they have left over from a successful Indiegogo campaign to take out a full-page ad in the New York Times in early June.

Update: Acik Demokrasi founder Sami Can Tandogdu reached me by email to add a couple points: Tandogdu and his team came up with the idea half a year ago but only finished Turkey’s legal due diligence of sites in time for the fifth day of the protests. The site currently has 50 active polls created by users and 2,000 daily unique visitors with 13,000 Facebook followers, mostly computer-savvy youths so far. Officials have not asked for any user data.

Tandogdu hopes to gain a more mainstream following in time for several elections in upcoming months. “We believe dialog and consensus between opposing ideologies is essential for democracy,” he says.

Turkish protesters also gathered to engage on the country’s issues through Eksi Sozluk [Sour Dictionary], arguably Turkey’s first social network and a Wikipedia-like resource for users to add context on individual terms. The 1999 social media dinosaur register registered almost 15 million monthly page views last month according to founder Sedat Kapanoglu. Part of its popularity has been its ability to provide unfiltered perspective from both sides in one handy place.

A screenshot of the live interviews and crowd footage available over Capul.tv

Creative efforts like the “standing man” protest also led to an explosion of digital photography spread through services like Instagram and Tumblr, while older tools like BlackBerry messenger, so instrumental in the London riots of two years ago, scarcely earned a mention.

Governments must also reevaluate their tactics in the face of such tech. While Turkey successfully blocked YouTube in past years, Akdeniz’ view is that Law No. 5651, which allows Turkey to block access to websites completely, no longer has the teeth that led to a past multi-year shutdown of YouTube in the country thanks to successful appeals in European courts.

While it has been widely reported that the Turkish government has reached out to Twitter and Facebook for user information on protesters, Facebook said last week it had rejected Turkish data requests, while Twitter is believed to have rebuffed the officials as well, with CEO Dick Costolo telling a forum last week his platform would defend users’ data. Twitter and the Turkish government through its Washington embassy and New York consulate did not reply to requests for comment from FORBES; Facebook declined to provide additional comment.

Those acts could be a sign of desperation that officials are no longer playing within their comfort zone, Tunc at Istanbul Bilgi University argues. “The Y generation made a huge impact on this protest and resistance culture in terms of tech use. The government fell way behind the whole mentality and is far from understanding this urban youth culture.”

While Reuters expects authorities to appeal Wednesday’s ruling, the protests appear to have become more of a referendum on top government leadership and the police than simply the protection of a park. A survey of 3,000 protesters found that while 70% had no political affiliation and a majority had not protested before, nine out of ten participated due to the behavior of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the police.

The protesters’ success at this point appears difficult to undo, as Turkey’s president Abdullah Gul noted last month that the “message has been received.” How that message was finally heard—through an explosion of technology from humorous apps to Web TV—has redefined the playbook for protesters and government dissenters worldwide.

For more on Eksi Sozluk and the rise of Turkish social media, see Forbes contributor Alex Kantrowitz’s story for PBS MediaShift.

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The court ruling referenced in the story as well as government admission that the administration must take into account the movement of recent weeks and work to be more transparent. Perhaps not a “total” victory, but something the protesters can take pride in.

I’m horrified by any violence that may have taken place against women in Egypt as with anywhere else. My lack of coverage there reflects the fact that I’m a tech writer, not that I don’t care. Hopefully others better suited to such coverage will stay on it.

Erdogan gambles on order with Turkey on the brink of an identity crisis. Secular protestors have a short window of opportunity to make a case for moderation. http://thirdeyeosint.blogspot.com/2013/07/turkeys-identity-crisis-on-brink.html